In April 2024, a video appeared in the media and social networks, allegedly depicting the death of a Ukrainian Armed Forces fighter. The footage appears to show the soldier exploding after throwing a grenade from a drone near him. We have verified the authenticity of the viral video.
Among others, the video was published in the Telegram channel “Ukraine.ru”(148,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), accompanying the entry with the following comment: “Ukrainian militants have recently demonstrated a simply enchanting desire for self-drinking. For example, this UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) operator decided to practice with drops right in the location. By a happy coincidence, the grenade turned out to be a live one.” With similar captions, the same video was published by the channels “Sanya in Florida"(489,000 views), "Gasparyan" (70,000) and "Russian tarantass"(55,000). Similar posts have become popular on “Peekaboo", in "VKontakte” and the social network X, where posts in foreign languages were most widely distributed. So, only two tweets per English And Arabic received 639,000 and 1 million views, respectively.
Among the media, they wrote about the footage of the alleged self-detonation of a Ukrainian soldier: “Public news service" And "Russian newspaper" The publication of the official press organ of the Russian government clarifies: “Apparently, the relaxed state played a cruel joke on the operator. At some point, he dropped a grenade that the drone was equipped with. Judging by the powerful explosion, it is unlikely that the fighter survived.”
The 11-second video shows a man lying on the floor, holding a drone control panel in his hands. From the details noticeable in the recording (a leaflet hanging on the wall with the image of the Ukrainian flag, as well as camouflage pants and other noticeable elements of uniform), the authors of the viral posts conclude that this is a UAV operator from among the Ukrainian military personnel. At the top of the video, a drone is shown hovering in the air, which at the 00:07 mark drops a grenade - it hits the helmet lying under the drone. Three seconds later an explosion allegedly occurs. In the background it sounds remix by Jaxomy and Agatino Romero for the song Pedro.
“Verified” tried to determine the original source of the viral video. In all the publications mentioned at the beginning of this analysis, the video bears the watermark of the Telegram channel “Troika", where the post was published on April 18, 2024 at 15:08 Moscow time and received almost 117,000 views. However, we were able to find an earlier entry in the channel "Talipov Online"(69,000 views) - the video was posted there on the same day at 10:40. This version is also superimposed with the channel's logo, which is missing in Troika's video. This suggests that the video had at least two sources of distribution. At the same time, “Troika", And "Talipov Online» were previously mentioned in the “Verified” reviews in connection with the publication of fake videos.
Our colleagues from the StopFake project studied recording of the alleged explosion and found signs of editing in it: “The fact is that the moment of detonation is not visible in the video. The shot with the explosion appears abruptly and immediately overlaps what was happening in the frame.”
It turned out that the viral video was superimposed on a popular effect on social networks, which on Instagram* is called Explosion ("Explosion"). Many similar videos with the hashtag #explosionprank can be found in TikTok, where back in 2022 users posted pranks with explosions.
A full video template of the same explosion (the video is rotated 90˚) can be found on YouTube.
Since neither “Verified” nor StopFake were able to determine where the original video was taken from, it is not known for sure who edited the video and for what purpose, adding an explosion effect. This could have been done either by the author of the original recording, who posted it in edited form as part of a popular flash mob on social networks, or by unknown persons who fabricated the video in order to spread misinformation. The Russian publication Avia.Pro at the same time put forward his version without providing any evidence. “It later became clear that the footage was edited by the Ukrainian military themselves in order to create disinformation and distributed through social networks and instant messengers, but the purpose of this remains unknown,” the website says. In any case, whoever put together the viral video does not show the death of the drone operator.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
Cover photo: collage “Verified” / social networks
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